The 2015 update of Facebook membership in the Caribbean countries and a comparison with our 2014 findings.
Facebook continues to be one of the largest social networks in the world with almost 1.5 billion users worldwide. For the past three years, we have been capturing Facebook membership data from across the Caribbean. Here we update our findings on Facebook subscriber numbers across the region, as at 9 March 2015, and compare them with those from our previous review.
Current Facebook membership numbers
For our 2015 review, we again secured data for 24 Caribbean countries, which are identified in Table 1. As of March 2015, and according to Facebook, there are approximately 9.8 million Facebook subscribers across the 24 countries assessed, which averages to approximately to 43% per country, but a regional penetration of around 30%.
In terms of absolute figures, the largest number of Facebook members was recorded in the Dominican Republic, at 3.6 million members, which was followed by Puerto Rico, with approximately 2 million, and Jamaica with 960,000. Conversely, the smallest Facebook memberships were recorded in Anguilla, at around 8,200, and thereafter in the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands at around 12,600 and 18,800, respectively.
Table 1: Estimated number of Facebook subscribers and subscriber penetration in select Caribbean countries as of March 2015 (Sources: Facebook, World Bank, CIA World Factbook, Wikipedia)
In terms of user density – number of Facebook subscribers against country population – the highest was recorded in Aruba, at 68%, and was followed by the Cayman Islands, at 62%, and Puerto Rico, at 55%. Conversely, the lowest Facebook member penetration was reported found in Haiti, where approximately 9% of the population are estimated to be Facebook subscribers. Further, excluding Haiti and Guyana, all other countries surveyed had a Facebook user penetration of over 30%.
What changes have occurred since 2014?
In the year since our last Facebook Snapshot, membership appears to have increased by approximately 10%, or approximately 900,000, across the 24 Caribbean countries compared. Most countries experienced an increase in user density as reflected in Figure 1. The exceptions were the British Virgin Islands and the Netherlands Antilles, where the number of users reportedly decreased by around 145 and 35,000 within the past year.
Figure 2: Facebook membership penetration in March 2014 and March 2015 in select Caribbean countries (Sources: Facebook, World Bank, CIA Factbook, Allin1Social, Wikipedia)
The greatest increase in Facebook users since our last review in 2014, approximately 269,000, was recorded in Puerto Rico, and was followed by Haiti, with approximately 228,000 new users, and Jamaica, with around 158,000 new Facebook users added
Some final thoughts…
At this time, no clear explanation can be given for the significant loss of membership recorded in the Netherlands. Strictly speaking, the Netherlands Antilles would comprise Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Sint Maarten, Saba and Sint Eustatius. However, Aruba’s Facebook user numbers are reported separately. It may thus be possible that there has been a reporting discrepancy, which could be due to the changing status of Curacao and Sint Maarten, in particular, within the Dutch Kingdom, and how data is reported for that group of countries might still be in transition. Hopefully by the next review the situation would be resolved.
Nevertheless, Facebook subscriber numbers are still increasing in the Caribbean, which suggests that it is still an exceedingly popular social network in the region. Again, the largest contributor to new members may be the teen age group, especially those who have reached the minimum age, 13 years old, to create a Facebook account.
Image credit: Sura Nualpradid (FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
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